Testimony, Jerry Jennings

I'll read with you in Romans chapter 5, and we'll read at verse 6. Romans chapter 5, in verse 6. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet peradventure or perhaps for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commended, that means he demonstrated or proved his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.

I worked with a man from this assembly, Mr. Roy. The last I knew he told me we had 57 series together. And after he told me that we had anywhere from two to three series after that.

So we probably had about 60 series together and never had a cross word. Never had to turn the furniture back up. He was a man that never brought any trouble, never made any trouble and never left any trouble.

He taught me that and he taught me a lot of other things too. One thing he taught me was to be gentle in the gospel and no need to shout and stomp your feet and kick the sides out of the podium. And he just preached with a steady voice and the Lord used him in a mighty way and he's seen a lot of souls saved.

I miss him very much. You can't preach with a man that many times and not miss him when he's gone. But he was saved through this verse, Romans 5 and verse 6. I believe he told me in the year of 1948, 47, 48, somewhere in there.

And it was out on Highway 20. And I remember one time mentioning that he was saved on a little dusty road in Iowa and he let me know real quick that that road wasn't dusty, that that was a hard top road. And amazing, in the fall of 1973, I was saved through the same identical verse.

So there was enough in that verse to save Mr. Roy and enough in that verse to save me. And if there's anybody lingering in nature's darkness tonight, there's enough in that verse to save you. Christ died for the ungodly.

Now, I don't know if I ever told you how the Lord saved me, but John, he kind of gave me a shot in the arm when he told a little bit about how God saved him. And so I think I'll just tell you how God saved me and maybe quit a little bit early because everybody's tired. And I'm sure you want to go home and hit the hay, as they always call it, hit the hay in Iowa.

Down in Oklahoma, they talk about crashing or stretching. Nobody hits the hay down there. Maybe there ain't no hay, I don't know.

Well, I was born in 1939, and you can figure it out now, I'm 82, I'm 81 years old. And I can't help it that I don't act like it. And I was born out in South Dakota in a little town called Davis in a little old wood-framed house.

And the day that my sister and I were born, I had a twin sister. We were in this little old frame house with my mother and the doctor. And my sister was born first.

And then my mother told me, of course, I didn't know what was going on, but my mother told me, she said, the doctor said to me, well, Nona, you're not done yet. And so then I, I don't know how many minutes later I came along, but I came along enough minutes later that my sister thought she was my boss all my life. And now we're in our 80s, and sometimes she still thinks she's my boss.

She tells me, go home and stay home. And I don't do it, but I don't tell her that I don't do it. But that's what she tells me.

She encourages me insofar as what I'm doing, but she doesn't want anything to do with it. And she told me here just lately, she says, you need to go home and stay home. So I went home, but I didn't stay home.

Anyway, we were born out there in South Dakota in a little old bitty town. When my sister and I were born, my father, he was, he was downtown passing out cigars, I guess is what they do, you know. And, and he probably was imbibing in too many spirits, and that's kind of what his life was made up of.

And so life went on and on, and, and one day I remember as a boy, we moved from South Dakota to Iowa, Northwest Iowa, a little town called Sutherland. And I remember that move distinctly, and I could even tell you some things about it. But anyway, in the, in the spring of 1948, my father, I should tell you, you young folks that are being raised in Christian homes, you thank the Lord every day of your situation and circumstances, and the privilege that you have to be raised in a Christian home.

I wasn't raised in a Christian home. My father was an alcoholic, and he did all the things that alcoholics did. And I remember well, he would come home from work, he would walk, he only had one eye, and he would walk from downtown, he managed a slagel lumber company, and they used to be around back in the day, but I don't think they're around now anymore.

And he would walk home, and he'd get home, and I don't know whether my mother would punch his button or whatever, but he would get angry, and he would beat her up, I mean, literally beat her up. And my brother and me and my sister watched that time and time and time again. And we would crawl under the kitchen table trying to hide from him.

Well, by the time he was done beating her up, he was exhausted, so he left us alone, and he would go away. In the spring of 1948, he went fishing with his cronies up in Spirit Lake, and some of you know where that's at. And they were fishing, and it was early spring, and the ice had just gone out of the lake, and for some odd known reason, he went out of the boat, out of the—in those days, they didn't have motors on them boats, I guess, and they had oars, and they were oaring themselves around the lake trying to catch fish, I suppose, I don't know what.

But anyways, he went out of the boat, and they ruled his death as drowning. And so I remember him lying in a coffin in my mother's house, and I would get up on the—they were Catholic people, and so they had these kneeling boards along the side of the coffin, and I would crawl up on there and stand up there, and I would reach down inside that coffin, and I'd rub his hair back like that, see? And I always thought as a little boy, I was eight years old, and I always thought, you know, my dad's not in that coffin. That's just his body.

Because if he was really in that coffin, that body would be acting differently than it is. And I would just lay in there, you know. So anyways, they had a funeral for him, and life went on and on.

And I was 16 years old, and I went into the Army. I wasn't supposed to go in at 16. I think my mom was trying to get rid of me.

But anyway, I remember this recruiter coming to the house, and he said to my mom, he says, are you sure this boy is 17? Oh yeah, he's 17, give me them papers. And she signed those papers, and away I went to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. I was in the Army now.

And I went through boot camp, and then I went through a second eight weeks, and then I went to, I think it might have been around Seattle, Washington somewhere, and I got on this boat. I called it a boat, but now I know it's a ship. And I got on this ship, and we went sailing for Korea.

And about 200 miles out of the coast of Korea, you knew you were getting close because it stunk so bad that it smelled bad. And I'm 16 years old, and I get off of this landing craft and make my way up this ramp and go through a repo depot, and then I got on a train with other men, you know. And they took us clear up on the DMZ.

And that's as far as the train went, and that's as far as we went, and we couldn't go any further or we'd go into North Korea. So while I was in the Army there in Korea, one day I'm walking into the motor pool, and some of you men that have been in the service know what a motor pool is, and I was walking in the motor pool, and a man come up behind me, it was my brother-in-law, and he tapped me on the shoulder, and he says, you need to get your sea bag ready, and you're going back to the States. And I said, why am I going back to the States? He said, because your brother drowned in Italy, and you need to go home for his funeral.

So I get on this plane, and I fly back to the States, and it was prop jobs in those days, it wasn't such a thing as a jet. And I got into San Francisco, California, it might have been Oakland, and I was flat broke, didn't have a dime. So I was in this airport, and there was a representative for the Red Cross, and I thought, oh, he'll take pity on me.

So he did take pity on me, but he says, you're going to have to pay me back. I got $150 out of it, and I went home for this funeral. And then again, time went on and on, and then things got hot and heavy in Vietnam, and I just knew that they needed me, so I enlisted, and I took a cruise.

You ever been on a cruise? Well, some folks go on a cruise. I got on a cruise, and I cruised all the way to Vietnam. I even got to cruise back, but, so I've been on two cruises.

And while I'm over there, I'm thinking pretty heavy, you know, because I know that there are guys that are getting shot, and I'm thinking that, you know, if you get shot, you're going to be in hell, and I don't really know why I even knew that, because I'd never heard the gospel before. But I had been told as a boy that there was a heaven, and there was a hell, and the good people went to heaven, and bad people went to hell, and I knew I was a bad people, so where are you going to go? Going to go to hell is where I was going to go. But that isn't true at all.

It's not good people that go to heaven. It's people that are saved and born again the Bible way, and washed in the precious blood of Christ. We're the only ones that go to heaven.

So anyways, time went on and on there as well, and I got back home, and I was happy for that. And then one day, there was a fellow. I'm shortening this up, but aren't you glad? I could get pretty long-winded.

Anyways, one day I'm away to work, and my wife is at home, my wife Judy, my first wife. The Lord has been good to me. He's given me two good wives.

My first one died, and then her sister introduced me to my now wife. Isn't that something? And we tried to avoid each other for at least a year, a year and a half. She didn't want to get married, and neither did I. I didn't want no more part of that.

And then, you know, the love bug bit. You know how it goes. So anyways, one day while I'm away to work, there's a man came to the door.

It might have been a woman, I'm not sure. But she left a track, and I'd never seen a track before in my life. You boys have read a lot of tracks, no doubt.

But I had never seen, I was 34 years of age. I'd never seen the inside of a Bible. I'd never seen a gospel paper, a track.

And my wife had this track up on the icebox. It was really a refrigerator. It wasn't an icebox, but you know what I mean.

Some of you older people know what I mean by an icebox. Used to get a lump of ice and put it in this box. And sometimes if you, we were just little kids, you know.

Sometimes if we were real good, the man that brought the ice to the house, he'd chip a chunk off of that block of ice and give it to us. And we'd go around licking on this piece of ice, and we just thought that was great. You know, that's great stuff.

Now you got all them little things like that. But all we had was ice. Well, we all survived.

So anyways, this lady or man, I don't remember which it was, and I wasn't there. So anyway, left this track and gave us an invitation to gospel meetings. So I read this track.

It was God's Way of Salvation. It was pretty wordy, but it was all right. But I didn't understand a thing about it.

Nothing. That was Greek to me. Every bit of it.

And so I said to my wife, I says, well, we're invited to gospel meetings? She says, yeah. I said, what's a gospel meeting? She says, I don't know. Well, I says, then why are we going to go? She says, well, I'm curious.

I'd like to go. And she says, I think you should. And I says, well, you know, maybe I could use a little religion.

She says, you could use a lot of religion. And it wasn't a religion that I needed. It was Christ.

And what I needed was a relationship, as our brother John has mentioned. Not religion. And so we went and heard the gospel.

And my wife had never heard the gospel before. And I was 34, and I think she was 31 or 32. I don't remember.

She heard the gospel four times. And the Lord saved her. And I can remember the verses she was saved through.

And this preacher was preaching on Exodus 12. And he was explaining the Passover lamb. I remember that.

And that preacher linked that up with John chapter 1, verse 29. Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. And she was saved through that.

So then on the way home one night, I think it was the fourth gospel meeting, she said to me, I got saved tonight. I said, Ryan, I didn't see you go forward. And it was a Baptist meeting.

It wasn't among the brethren. Don't get excited. It was a Baptist meeting.

Fundamental Baptist. And she said, I said, I didn't see you go forward. Because they call them forward and try to make a Christian out of them, you know.

And she says, no, you didn't see me go forward. Because I didn't go forward. Oh, well, that made sense to me.

So then I said, well, tell me how you got saved. And she told me. And it was so absolutely simple.

I looked at her and I said, you know, I think there's more to it than that. And she said, well, if you think there's more to it than that, she says, you're just going to die and go to hell. I tell you, she was a judgment preacher right from the get-go.

And I thought to myself how true that is. If I die the way I am, that's just exactly where I'm going to go. And so night after night, I would listen to this man preach the gospel.

And I wouldn't know how many times he quoted this verse, Romans 5 and verse 6. While we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. But one night he quoted that verse. And I never heard the first part of it.

While we were yet without strength in due time. I never heard that at all. Here's what I heard.

Christ died for the ungodly. And you know, I thought in my mind, if there ever was an ungodly sinner, it's me. And I don't know anything about any of these people in this room.

And I don't care. But I do care about me. And I am an ungodly sinner.

And that's exactly who Christ died for. And that was just like a light snapped in my mind. And I suddenly, everything that was clouded up to me before suddenly became light.

And then this preacher went on to explain the resurrection of Christ and how important it was and still is tonight. And he said, that is proof positive that the death of Christ has satisfied the claims of God. And God is satisfied with the sacrifice.

And he's satisfied with his son. And a little word, if, came into my mind. It was never an if of doubt.

But the thought came to me this way. If God is satisfied, I'm satisfied. And you know, really what satisfied me that night is not the fact that I was satisfied.

But what satisfied me is the fact that I suddenly realized that God was satisfied. And that was the important part. And after this meeting was over, the Baptists did what the Baptists do.

And they had a lunch in the basement, right? So here we are, just like birds on a telephone wire, all lined up down there in the basement to get our lunch. And there was a man ahead of me and his name was Kenny Owens. And he was a Baptist preacher out of Sparrow, Wisconsin.

And he turned to me and he says, have you ever gotten saved? I goes, yeah. He said, well, how long have you been saved? I said, about 15 minutes. And he said to me, I didn't see you go forward.

And I said, that's because I didn't. And I said, you don't think a person gets saved just sitting in their seat? He said, yeah, I do. He said, tell me what happened.

So I told him. And he was happy with it. And then he told me something.

He said, your Christianity is like a beautiful red rose. And he says, every day, petal by petal, that rose will open. And it'll get more beautiful every day.

Isn't that true? It gets more beautiful every day. And you know, that night, I went on my way rejoicing over the knowledge of sins forgiven. And heaven as my home.

And that's what we want for you tonight. If you're a stranger to the grace of God, that you might come to the one who calls you so kindly and carefully and says, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. How hard can it be to come to someone who loves you? I wouldn't be hard at all, would it? And someone who loves you, the Lord Jesus, is calling you to come to him.

That you might find rest for your soul. And that you might be yoked up with him in your lifetime. And be able to move through this world in harmony with divine persons.

And looking forward to the day when the Lord comes again to shout his waiting people home. Don't miss it. If you miss it, you have missed the greatest chance, the greatest opportunity that you could ever have in your lifetime.

Young man, young woman, listen closely. Because it involves you. And you want to come to the one who is calling you so kindly tonight.

Because he loves you. Because he cares for you. And that's simply why he says, come unto me.

What part of that is hard to understand? He's just calling you to come to him because he loves you. And he died on the cross of Calvary to save those who were lost. He came to seek and to save that which is lost.

So come to Christ tonight and be saved for time in all eternity. And go on your way rejoicing tonight over the knowledge of sins forgiven. And heaven is your home.

We'll pray.